As customers continue to build their cloud strategy with a combination of VMware products and services, one thing has been heard loud and clear…”Make Day 2 Operations easy!” As customers continue to move and increase their footprint in VMWonAWS, the SDDC’s demand for management resources will increase. While the VMC Sizer is a great tool to help understand the recommended size of an new SDDC, there will be times when SDDC growth is too big for the management VMs to handle after the SDDC is deployed…kind of like the time when Sheriff Brody realized he was going to need something much larger to catch a Great White shark.
When an SDDC is created, two resource pools are created. One named “Compute- ResourcePool” and one named “Mgmt-ResourcePool”. Mgmt-ResourcePool (MRP) is VMware managed and is comprised of vCenter, 2 NSX Edges, and 3 NSX Managers by default. In order ensure uptime and performance, all resources in this MRP have reservations assigned so these appliances always have what they need.
For more information, Product Manager Vish Kalsi wrote a quick blog on choosing the correct SDDC deployment. In short, medium management appliances require 34 vCPU and 116GB memory to run vCenter, NSX Manager and other management appliances. Large management appliances require 68 vCPU and 240GB memory. Large SDDCs are ideal for addressing a larger density of workloads . Large SDDCs support enhanced network throughput on the NSX Edge appliance. VMware recommends large-sized deployments with more than 30 hosts or 3000 VMs, or if the resources (CPU or memory) are oversubscribed in the management cluster.
Previously, a VMware support ticket needed to be opened in order to convert a regular aka medium SDDC to large. This method was obviously not preferred by most as this is the opposite of a self-service cloud operation model. However, begging with VMWonAWS 1.10, you can now upscale your SDDC to large with just a few clicks….or keystrokes!!!
Start by logging into the Cloud Services Portal, select your SDDC and go to Settings > SDDC > Management Appliance. You will see your SDDC as well as the “Upsize” option listed as seen below.
The only thing left to do is accept the addition of hosts if necessary and understand that you can never go back to a regular size SDDC. Once Upsize is selected, the process takes about 2 hours to complete and you will lose connectivity. It is recommended to do this during a maintenance window.
Once complete, the Management appliances will reflect as a “Large”
Once, in vCenter, you will see that the NSX Edges have gone from 4 CPU x 8 GB RAM to 8 CPU x 32 GB RAM and vCenter has gone from 8 CPU x 28 GB RAM to 16 CPU x 37 GB RAM (only 12 of the 16 CPUs are reserved in this configuration). You can check the before and after in the VM summary as seen below.
Now that the SDDCs have been upscaled, it’s onto bigger and better things for your VMWonAWS SDDC!
Street2Clouds 